ACB Sestao will stop its production at the end of November and will resume it in January

The Bizkaia Compact Steelworks (ACB) in Sestao, from the ArcelorMittal group, will stop production at end of november and will resume it in January, as EITB Media has learned.

Both the company and the workers’ committee announced a few days ago that such a closure would take place, without a specific date having been set. Finally, production will be suspended at the end of November and will last approximately one month.

The company has argued that the suspension of production is due to the rise in electricity prices. Argument that contradicts the one offered by ArcelorMittal Sestao’s own management last Friday, since, according to a statement at the time, the shutdown is due to “a series of planned engineering works”, which are part of “an improvement plan” that will allow the plant’s annual production capacity to be expanded to 1.6 million tons in 2023, as well as reducing the level of CO2 emissions to 500 kg per ton of steel produced.

Representatives of the UGT, CC.OO., LAB and ELA, components of the committee, affirmed on Friday that the stop is due to the union rejection of “organizational modifications” raised by the company. They accused the management of the ACB “blackmailing the social part, putting as a condition to resume production in Sestao, the acceptance of the organizational changes proposed unilaterally, as well as the revision of some points of the Agreement that cover the changes intended organizational “.

The closure will mean the dismissal of more than a hundred workers eventual.

The workers denounce that “although the current energy situation has had a direct impact on the transformation costs that hinder the competitiveness of our products”, the company “currently presents considerable margins in its profits”; for which he criticizes that the company “once again unloads its interest games on its workers and the public coffers.”